Lost Stravinsky Score Discovered

Oh the joy of a serendipity….of discovering a lost score long after its composer is no more.

This is the story of Igor Stravinsky’s 1908 piece, Pogrebal’naya Pesnya (Funeral Song) written in memory of his teacher, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, shortly after Rimsky’s death in June that year. The 12-minute work was performed only once, in a Russian symphony concert held in the Conservatoire in January 1909, after which the score was thought to have been destroyed in the 1917 revolutions or the subsequent civil war.